1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for switching between an AMC (Adaptive Modulation and Coding) mode and a diversity mode in an OFDMA-CDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access-Code Division Multiplexing), and in particular, to an apparatus and method for adaptively applying an AMC mode or a diversity mode according to a channel environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently having gained prominence in high-speed data transmission over wired/wireless channels, OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) is a special case of MCM (Multi-Carrier Modulation). In OFDM, a serial symbol sequence is converted to parallel symbol sequences and modulated to mutually orthogonal sub-carriers or sub-channels, prior to transmission.
The first MCM systems appeared in the late 1950's for military HF (High Frequency) radio communication, and OFDM with overlapping orthogonal sub-carriers was initially developed in the 1970's. However, because of the difficulty in orthogonal modulation between multiple carriers, OFDM has limitations in applications for real systems.
However, in 1971, Weinstein, et al. proposed an OFDM scheme that applies DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) to parallel data transmission as an efficient modulation/demodulation process, which was a driving force behind the development of OFDM. Also, the introduction of a guard interval and a cyclic prefix as a specific guard interval further mitigated the adverse effects of multi-path propagation and delay spread on systems.
Accordingly, OFDM has now been utilized in wide fields of digital data communications such as DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), digital TV broadcasting, WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), and WATM (Wireless Asynchronous Transfer Mode). Although hardware complexity was an obstacle to the widespread use of OFDM, recent advances in digital signal processing technology including FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and IFFT (Inverse Fast Fourier Transform) have enabled easier OFDM implementation.
OFDM, similar to FDM (Frequency Division Multiplexing), boasts optimum transmission efficiency in high-speed data transmission because it transmits data on sub-carriers, while maintaining orthogonality among them. Especially, efficient frequency use attributed to overlapping frequency spectrums, and robustness against frequency selective fading and multi-path fading further increases the transmission efficiency in the high-speed data transmission.
OFDM reduces the effects of ISI (Inter-Symbol Interference) by use of guard intervals and enables design of a simple equalizer hardware structure. Furthermore, because OFDM is robust against impulsive noise, it is increasingly utilized in communication system configurations.
OFDMA-CDM is a communication scheme in which the total available frequency band is divided into a plurality of sub-frequency bands and data that is mapped onto the sub-frequency bands is spread with a predetermined spreading factor, prior to transmission.
Traditionally, the OFDMA-CDM system uses an AMC mode or a diversity mode alone. The AMC mode uses an adaptive modulation and coding scheme (MCS) level according to a channel state and the diversity mode uses a fixed MCS level. It was also proposed that a predetermined frequency band or time band is allocated for the AMC mode and a random frequency band is allocated for a non-AMC mode.
Systems using only the AMC mode or the diversity mode have limitations in achieving optimum performance according to a channel state. Given a large coherence bandwidth and a long coherence time, the AMC-mode system achieves an optimum performance, but the diversity-mode system has merely a slight performance gain. Under the opposite channel environment, that is, with a narrow coherence bandwidth and a short coherence time, the diversity-mode system achieves the optimum performance, while the AMC-mode system obtains a minimal performance gain.
Accordingly, the technique of allocating a predetermined frequency or time domain for the AMC mode and a random frequency band for the diversity mode, respectively, is not effective in terms of channel use efficiency. If a channel in a different frequency band is good, relative to a channel in the frequency band allocated for the AMC mode, the AMC mode operation continuously experiences the bad channel because the allocated frequency band does not change.